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As commonly used
Vernacular

Vernacular refers to the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to Lingua franca, official standards or global languages....
, individual refers to a person
Person

The term person in common usage means an individual human being. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term also has specialised context-specific meanings....
 or to any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics
Statistics

Statistics is a Mathematics pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. It also provides tools for prediction and forecasting based on data....
 and metaphysics
Metaphysics

Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics....
, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person." (q.v. "The problem of proper name
Proper name

"A proper name [is] a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about" writes John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic , "but not of telling anything about it"....
s"). From the seventeenth century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism
Individualism

Individualism is the Morality stance, political philosophy, or social outlook that stresses independence and self-reliance. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires, while opposing most external interference upon one's choices, whether by society, or any other group or institution....
. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual
Individual

As vernacular, individual refers to a person or to any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics and metaphysics, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person." ....
; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires.

is statement Cogito ergo sum
Cogito ergo sum

"'" , sometimes misquoted as ' , is a philosophy statement in Latin used by Ren? Descartes, which became a foundational element of Western philosophy....
 ("I think therefore I am"), Rene Descartes
René Descartes

Ren? Descartes , , also known as Renatus Cartesius , was a French philosophy, mathematician, scientist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic....
 posits the notion the individual subject, distinct from the world around him or her.






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As commonly used
Vernacular

Vernacular refers to the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to Lingua franca, official standards or global languages....
, individual refers to a person
Person

The term person in common usage means an individual human being. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term also has specialised context-specific meanings....
 or to any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics
Statistics

Statistics is a Mathematics pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. It also provides tools for prediction and forecasting based on data....
 and metaphysics
Metaphysics

Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics....
, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person." (q.v. "The problem of proper name
Proper name

"A proper name [is] a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about" writes John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic , "but not of telling anything about it"....
s"). From the seventeenth century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism
Individualism

Individualism is the Morality stance, political philosophy, or social outlook that stresses independence and self-reliance. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires, while opposing most external interference upon one's choices, whether by society, or any other group or institution....
. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual
Individual

As vernacular, individual refers to a person or to any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics and metaphysics, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person." ....
; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires.

Descartes

In his statement Cogito ergo sum
Cogito ergo sum

"'" , sometimes misquoted as ' , is a philosophy statement in Latin used by Ren? Descartes, which became a foundational element of Western philosophy....
 ("I think therefore I am"), Rene Descartes
René Descartes

Ren? Descartes , , also known as Renatus Cartesius , was a French philosophy, mathematician, scientist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic....
 posits the notion the individual subject, distinct from the world around him or her. This is the most famous articulation of subject-object dualism (see subject-object problem
Subject-object problem

The subject-object problem is a longstanding Philosophy issue. It arises from the notion that the world consists of object which are perception or otherwise acted upon by subject ....
) in the Western philosophical tradition.

Empiricism

Early empiricists
Empiricism

In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know "things," part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, or "theory of knowledge"....
 such as Ibn Tufail
Ibn Tufail

Ibn Tufail was an Al-Andalus-Arab Muslim polymath: an Arabic literature, novelist, Early Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Medicine in medieval Islam, vizier, and court official....
 and John Locke
John Locke

John Locke was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British Empiricism, but is equally important to social contract theory....
 introduced the idea of the individual as a tabula rasa
Tabula rasa

Tabula rasa refers to the epistemology thesis that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and sensory perception....
 ("blank slate"), shaped from birth by experience and education. This ties into the idea of the liberty and rights of the individual, society as a social contract
Social contract

Social contract describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people form nations and maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order....
 between rational
Rationality

Rationality as a term is related to the idea of reason, a word which following Webster's may be derived as much from older terms referring to thinking itself as from giving an account or an explanation....
 individuals, and the beginnings of individualism
Individualism

Individualism is the Morality stance, political philosophy, or social outlook that stresses independence and self-reliance. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires, while opposing most external interference upon one's choices, whether by society, or any other group or institution....
 as a doctrine.

Hegel

Hegel regarded history as the unfolding of God
God

God is a deity in theism and deism religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....
's plan through a process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The role of the individual in this view was as an agent of this unfolding--a part of a greater whole.

Existentialism

With the rise of existentialism
Existentialism

Existentialism is a term that has been applied to the work of a number of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, took the human subject — not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual and his or her conditions of existence — as a starting point...
, Kierkegaard rejected Hegel's notion of the individual as subordinated to the forces of history. Instead, he elevated the individual's subjectivity and capacity to choose his or her own fate. Later Existentialists built upon this notion. Nietzsche, for example, examines the individual's need to define his/her own self and circumstances in his concept of the will to power
The Will to Power

The Will to Power is the title given to a book of selections from the notebooks of Friedrich Nietzsche by his sister Elisabeth F?rster-Nietzsche and Heinrich K?selitz ....
 and the heroic ideal of the Übermensch
Übermensch

The ?bermensch is a concept in the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche posited the ?bermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
. The individual is also central to Sartre's philosophy, which emphasizes individual authenticity, responsibility, and free will
Free will

The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions. Addressing this question requires understanding the relationship between freedom and Causality, and determining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic....
. In both Sartre and Nietzsche (and in Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev was a Russian religious and political philosophy....
), the individual is called upon to create his or her own values, rather than rely on external, socially imposed codes of morality.

Martin Buber's I and Thou

In I and Thou
I and Thou

Ich und Du, usually translated as I and Thou, is a book by Martin Buber, published in 1923, and first translated to English in 1937....
, Martin Buber
Martin Buber

Martin Buber was an Austrian-Israeli-Jewish philosopher, translator, and educator, whose work centered on theism ideals of religious consciousness, interpersonal relations, and community....
 presents the individual as something that changes depending on how he or she is relating to the outside world, which can be in one of two ways: In the I-it relation, the individual relates to the external world in terms of objects that are separate from him or herself (an "I" looking at an "it"). In the I-thou relation, the individual has a personal connection to the external, and feels almost a part of whatever he or she is relating to; the subject-object dichotomy disappears (see Nondualism
Nondualism

Nondualism implies that things appear distinct while not being separate. The word's origin is the Latin duo meaning "two" and is used as the English translation of the Sanskrit term advaita....
).

Buddhism

In Buddhism
Buddhism

Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices considered by most to be a religionand is based on the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as "The Buddha" , who was born in what is today Nepal....
, the concept of the individual lies in anatman, or "no-self." According to anatman, the individual is really a series of interconnected processes that, working together, give the appearance of being a single, separated whole. In this way, anatman, together with anicca, resembles a kind of bundle theory
Bundle theory

Bundle theory, originated by the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, is the ontology theory about Object in which an object consists only of a collection of properties, relations or trope #Trope theory in metaphysics....
. Instead of an atomic, indivisible self distinct from reality (see Subject-object problem
Subject-object problem

The subject-object problem is a longstanding Philosophy issue. It arises from the notion that the world consists of object which are perception or otherwise acted upon by subject ....
), the individual in Buddhism is understood as an interrelated part of an ever-changing, impermanent universe (see interdependence
Interdependence

Interdependence is a dynamic of being mutually responsible to and sharing a common set of principles with others. This concept differs distinctly from "dependence" in that an interdependent relationship implies that all participants are emotionally, economically, ecologically and or morally "interdependent." Some people advocate Freedom or i...
, Nondualism
Nondualism

Nondualism implies that things appear distinct while not being separate. The word's origin is the Latin duo meaning "two" and is used as the English translation of the Sanskrit term advaita....
, reciprocity
Reciprocity

Reciprocity may refer to:*Ethic of reciprocity, the "Golden Rule" principle in ethics and religion*Norm of reciprocity, social norm of in-kind responses to the behavior of others ...
).

See also

  • Atom (disambiguation)
    Atom (disambiguation)

    An atom is the smallest particle of a chemical element that retains its chemical properties.Atom may also refer to:* Atom , a minimal measurable set...
  • Consciousness
    Consciousness

    Consciousness is a difficult term to define, because the word is used and understood in a wide variety of ways, so that it frequently happens that what one person sees as a definition of consciousness is seen by others as about something else altogether....
  • Cultural identity
    Cultural identity

    Cultural identity is the Identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as he or she is influenced by her belonging to a group or culture....
  • Identity
    Identity (social science)

    Identity is an umbrella term used throughout the social sciences to describe an individual's comprehension of him or herself as a discrete, separate entity....
  • Independent
    Independence

    Independence is the self-government of a nation, country, or state by its residents and population, or some portion thereof, generally exercising sovereignty....
  • Person
    Person

    The term person in common usage means an individual human being. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term also has specialised context-specific meanings....
  • Self (philosophy)
    Self (philosophy)

    Self is broadly defined as the essential qualities that make a person distinct from all others. The task in philosophy is defining what these qualities are, and there have been a number of different approaches....
  • Self (sociology)
    Self (sociology)

    In sociology, the self refers to an individual person from the perspective of that person. It is the individual's conception of himself or herself, and the underlying capacity of the person's mind or intellect which formed that conception ....
  • Self (psychology)
    Self (psychology)

    The self is a key construct in several schools of psychology, broadly referring to the cognitive representation of one's identity. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology stems from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known....
  • Self (spirituality)
    Self (spirituality)

    The Self is a complex and core subject in many forms of spirituality. Two types of self are commonly considered - the self that is the ego , also called the learned, superficial self of mind and body, an egoic creation, and the self which is sometimes called the "True Self", the "I" , the "Atman" , the "Observing Self", or the "Witness"....